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Snow chains for a Winnebago View

Over Christmas we drove the Navion (an Itasca Navion is another name for the Winnebago View) to the ski resort for a night. It had been dumping snow for days, and we wanted some of it, and it seemed a great chance to try the motorhome in the snow.

IMG_20151222_091114892

Because the weather had been so bad/awesome, chains were required on the road up to the mountain. So here’s what I learned:

  • With duallies, you need to be careful with chain clearance between tires. So even though there’s a ton of clearance in the wheel well for chains, low-clearance chains are still recommended because of the smaller space between the inner and outer tires.
  • Installing chains on a duallie motorhome isn’t too bad. You drive the inner tire up on a ramp (in my case my Lynx leveling blocks), so that the outer tire is suspended in the air.
  • Bring foul-weather gear. You’ll be on the ground checking the chains, and that ground is going to be slushy, cold, and filthy.

Once the chains are on, try to stay on the snow-covered portion of the roads. Driving on bare pavement drastically reduces the life of your chains – and it rattles the heck out of the occupants! I kept to 25mph with my emergency flashers on, and was quite happy.

For chains, I bought these:

Security Chain Company SZ429 Super Z6 Cable Chain (Amazon.com)

They were easy to install, remove, and store away, and cost less than $100.

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Downhill MTB Body Armor, Part 2: Upper body

This is my first year doing lift-served downhill mountain biking, so I spent a fair amount of time researching and trying on different armor to keep me all in one piece. Here’s what I ended up with.

Upper body armor

Here was my criteria for upper body armor:

  • Integrated back pad
  • Shoulder pads
  • Elbow pads
  • Chest protection
  • Not too hot
  • Not too bulky
  • Not too expensive

This isn’t the only way to go, though. Some alternatives:

In the end, the best combo of protection, wearability, and affordability, was:

Leatt 3DF AirFit Lite Body Protector

It’sbody_protector_leatt3_df_airfit_lite160172_cm_zoom a compression shirt sort of top, made out of a lightweight spandex-y material that breathes well. Padding includes chest, back, some side protection, shoulders, elbows, and biceps(!). The padding is 3DF, also commonly known as 3DO – a soft foam that hardens up on impact. While it doesn’t offer the same puncture protection that a hard shell offers, it’s much more comfortable to wear due to the flexibility.

Under a jersey, the Leatt top is minorly bulky without being outrageous. It’s right at home in the bike park, where armor is commonly worn, but it’s too bulky and too hot for anything other than lift-served riding. I did find it comfortable for a full day of descending in high-70s weather – I was sweaty, and it felt amazing to take that top off at the end of the day, but I never overheated.

It has integrated elastics for a Leatt neck brace, and the brace works well without having to remove any of the chest or back armor – a big advantage if you rock a brace.

Bonus: this is a great top for women. There’s a terrible shortage of women-specific DH gear, especially for tops. From scouring the internet it seems that some women go for the hard-shell motocross armor / roost guards, some forego chest protection, and some have found soft pad tops that work for them. My wife finds the Leatt top to be comfortable, without being overly bulky, and the chest pad bends well to her curves.

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Downhill MTB Body Armor, Part 1: Helmets

This is my first year doing lift-served downhill mountain biking, so I spent a fair amount of time researching and trying on different armor to keep me all in one piece. Here’s what I ended up with.

Helmet

Between my wife and I we own 4 full-face helmets.

13TLD_D2_DELTA_RED_05

I ride with a Troy Lee Designs D2 full-face helmet. Super comfortable, very nice looking, and supposedly good for protection (I won’t know for sure until I try it, though!). There’s a newer D3 model out, which looks quite different – wider and more squared off at the bottom. The D3 is designed to work with a neck brace, which is my complaint about the D2 – it’s too low-profile to work well with a brace. My head is able to flex a long way before the rim of the helmet comes in contact with the brace. For maximum protection, the helmet rim and the brace should be quite close to each other. If you’re not riding with a brace, or if you have bulkier shoulders / a shorter neck than me (I’m a skinny long-necked geek) then the D2 could be a good choice. Fits large – I’m a 60cm head, so usually an XL, but with the Troy Lee D2 I’m a M/L.

$_35

 

My wife rides with a Giro Cipher. I think this may be the perfect helmet. It has a good rim shape to work with the neck brace, isn’t too bulky but is very comfortable, doesn’t cost an outrageous amount, and has cool colors!

It also works well with a neck brace, due to its flat bottom rim.

I tried a Bell Transfer 9, which was on sale for $99, but the helmet was just too huge and bulky. This is of course partly due to my giant noggin, but the helmet seems to have a lot of bulk for its size. Otherwise, it gets good reviews and is reasonably priced. The Full 9 is the higher-end version of this helmet, and comes in an optional carbon shell.

2012_COMP_SHIFTED_WHT

For non lift-served riding, I use a SixSixOne Comp. It’s nice and lightweight, reasonably well ventilated, and costs less than $100. I don’t feel that it has enough protection for DH riding, but it’s perfect for the local trails and jumps.

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301 redirects not working with WordPress (the solution)

I just moved my site over from github pages to WordPress. In doing so, my post URLs changed, and I wanted to redirect so that visitors from search results wouldn’t hit a ‘page not found’.

My webhost uses cPanel, so I followed the instructions to set up 301 redirects for my pages. But they didn’t work! A bit of googling turned up that redirects don’t always work as expected when using content management systems like WordPress, but didn’t provide the answer. So here it is!

Because WordPress rewrites URLs so that it can handle pretty permalinks, your redirect (rewrite) rules must go above the WordPress section in your .htaccess file:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^heycascadia\.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.heycascadia\.com$
RewriteRule ^2014\/08\/08\/arduino\-wireless\-freezer\-alarm\/$ "http\:\/\/www\.heycascadia\.com\/arduino\-wireless\-freezer\-alarm\/" [R=301,L]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^heycascadia\.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.heycascadia\.com$
RewriteRule ^2014\/08\/19\/blackberry\-workgloves\/$ "http\:\/\/www\.heycascadia\.com\/blackberry\-proof\-workgloves\/" [R=301,L]

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

If they’re below the # BEGIN WordPress section, the URLs will be rewritten first, and then won’t match your redirect rules.

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Some things I learned about Jekyll and Liquid

I’ve been working on a site recently for an open-source project, which is hosted using GitHub pages.

I struggled a fair amound with conditionals, and this is what I learned:

  • Liquid doesn’t accept double-quotes for conditionals. You need to use single quotes.
  • There needs to be a space between the comparison operator and the terms on either side. You can’t run them together without a space.
  • You can use any YAML front-matter value, even custom values. For example, I used category: docs for pages that are documentation pages. I can access this later with page.category.

An example of all of this:

{% for page in site.pages %}
{% if page.category == 'docs' %} ... do something .. {% endif %}
{% endfor %}

The above works. What wouldn’t work:

// Need a space before and after operator.
{% if page.category=='docs' %}

// Double quotes are not supported; use single quotes.
{% if page.category == "docs" %}
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Blackberry-proof workgloves

Once upon a time, I had a backyard full of blackberries:

backyard1

They were wound tightly around thousands of salmonberry plants, and the vines were as thick as my thumb. They had HUGE thorns that were viciously sharp.

My usual nitrile gloves were useless against the thorns, and I despaired as to what I would do with these blackberries. And then, at my local hardware store, I found these:

wells-lamont-blackberry-gloves

They’re Wells Lamont cowhide gloves with a padded palm and they’re the toughest gloves I’ve ever come across. I could grab a monster blackberry vine and pull, and only one thorn in a hundred could make it through that leather.

backyard2

So, if you’re clearing blackberries and looking for a glove that’ll stand up to the thorns, buy yourself a pair of these.

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You have to solder Arduino shields

It’s so obvious to everyone else, that I couldn’t find any reference to it on the internet: you have to solder an Arduino shield to the headers.

I thought it was plug and play, since the little header pins seemed very snug when I put the shield over the Arduino Uno. But the shield wasn’t working, and it turns out that each pin needs to be soldered.

Luckily, soldering is very easy, and I was able to do it in less than 10 minutes, never having soldered before. It’s worth checking out some YouTube vids before you start, though.

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Arduino wireless freezer alarm

The other day I opened my deep freeze to discover everything inside slowly melting. The freezer had tripped the GFCI on the circuit, and silently turned off.

I don’t keep a lot of food in there, so there’s no real reason for a freezer alarm that will ping me when the temperature rises, but it was a great excuse to buy and tinker with an Arduino.

Here’s where I’m at so far:

arduino_freezer_alarm

Continue reading “Arduino wireless freezer alarm”